Allan Ramsay. [A biography.] - National Library of Scotland

54
FAMOUS SCOTS
Elegies^ one on John Cowper, the Kirk-Treasurer's-Man,
whose official oversight of the nymphes de pave furnished
the poet with a roUickingly ludicrous theme, of which he
made the most; the other, an Elegy on Lucky Wood,
alewife in the Canongate, also gave Ramsay full scope
for the exercise of that broad Rabelaisian humour, of his
possession of which there was now no longer to be any
doubt.
Finally, in 1716, he achieved his great success, which
stamped him as unquestionably one of the greatest
delineators that had as yet appeared, of rural Scottish
life amongst the humbler classes. As is well known,
a fragment is in existence consisting of one canto of a
poem entitled Chrisfs Kirk on the Green. Tradition
and internal evidence alike point to King James I. as the
author. The theme is the description of a brawl at a
country wedding, which breaks out just as the dancing
was commencing. 'The king,' says Ramsay, 'having
painted the rustic squabble with an uncommon spirit, in
a most ludicrous manner, in a stanza of verse, the most
difficult to keep the sense complete, as he had done,
without being forced to bring in words for crambo's sake
where they return so frequently, I have presumed to
imitate His Majesty in continuing the laughable scene.
Ambitious to imitate so great an original, I put a stop to
the war, called a congress, and made them sign a peace,
that the world might have their picture in the more
agreeable hours of drinking, dancing, and singing. The
following cantos were written, the one in 17 15 (O.S.
corresponding to January 17 16), the other in 17 18, about
three hundred years after the first. Let no worthy poet
despair of immortality,— good sense will always be the